Program Highlights
For the first time, the 2008 NWSA National Conference program book offered an extended explanation of the conference theme, "Resisting Hegemonies: Race and Sexual Politics in Nation, Region, Empire." Below is a copy of that text.
From its role in the time of slavery as a borderland space between North and South to its recent history of racist police violence, community uprisings, federal oversight, and homophobic statutes (subsequently repealed), Cincinnati reflects contemporary political struggles that are regionally unique as well as representative of how politics are manifested in many regions nationally and internationally.
Confronting racism and homophobia are central to the theoretical work of women's and gender studies and constitute ongoing struggles among the field's practitioners. In the past, Black feminist thought and LGBT, queer, and sexuality studies have offered productive and important challenges to the field of women's studies. Emphasizing race and sexual politics in this conference theme serves to honor these major theoretical contributions and to remind us that undoing the long history of racism and homophobia in women's and gender studies, Cincinnati, and beyond is an ongoing process that requires further study and action.
Foregrounding local, national, and international politics allows us to examine power relations and the differences they construct. This Call situates race and sexual politics in relation to nation, region, and empire in recognition of the importance of contemporary postcolonial and transnational feminist inquiry to such examinations. For example, feminist inquiry can focus on the structural building blocks of empire, namely regional integration projects that support neoliberal globalization while militarizing borders to keep migrants out.
Likewise queer scholarship helps identify heteronormative policies as methods by which exclusionist nationalist and hegemonic imperial projects are carried out. And putting feminist area studies in conversation with feminist ethnic/diaspora studies in conversation also enable us to make the connections necessary to resist empire "at home" and "abroad." Finally, these foci can also extend to the arena of electoral politics in this presidential election year, where race and gender issues will play a critical role.
The overall theme of "resisting hegemonies" was broad enough to invite various forms of interdisciplinary and disciplinary feminist inquiry as well as the full array of feminist pedagogical, activist, cultural, and spiritual work.
The program also laid out conference sessions related to the two subthemes: "Politics of Nation, Region, and Empire" and "Race and Sexual Politics." The former included sessions like "Imploding the Master's House: Subverting Hegemonic Discourses on Race, Sexual Politics, and Nationality" and "Resistance Is Fertile: Direct Action In The Queer, Animal, And Earth Liberation Movements," while the latter included "Sexual Politics And Global Hegemonies: Negotiating Heteronormativities In Trans/National Context" and "Towards A Politics Of Critical Relationality: Navigating The Excesses Of Identitarian And Postrace/Postfeminist Discourses"
True to the theme and subthemes, the conference was headlined by a Keynote Address by Patricia Hill Collins, social theorist and writer of the groundbreaking books Black Feminist Thought and Black Sexual Politics, among many others. While the 2008 conference did not include the usual Plenary Sessions, it did hold a slate of other special sessions. Introduced at the 2006 National Conference, the Critical Issues Sessions were a central part of the 2008 programming. Below are the titles and abstracts of each of the Critical Issues Sessions.
"Academic Publishing in Women's Studies"
This session will offer practical advice about how to get published in women's studies, from women's studies journals to books and edited collections. Get tips on selecting chapters for journal publication versus developing a full academic book proposal. Understand how the journal submission process and timeline works, and gain insight into interpreting reviewer reports. Learn the best strategies for identifying a press, approaching an editor, developing a proposal, and understanding the publishing market.
"Promoting Racial Diversity and Inclusion"
This session will examine programs and initiatives to promote racial diversity in organizations, curricula, and staffing, among others. Session leaders will discuss efforts underway as they relate to curriculum development, a National Council for Research on Women project titled "Diversifying the Leadership of Women's Research, Policy & Advocacy Centers," and NWSA anti-racism projects. Diversifying the Leadership of Women's Research, Policy, and Advocacy Centers is a Ford Foundation-funded project aimed at promoting the leadership of women of color from historically underrepresented groups in the United States within NCRW and its affiliated research, policy and advocacy member centers.
"Queer Pedagogies"
Our session approaches queer pedagogy from the assumption that it represents an intersection between queer theory and critical pedagogy. At the same time, we are leery of certain strands of queer scholarship which seem to position queer pedagogy as a kind of afterthought to academically-hip queer theory.
As William Spurlin reminds us, "teachinq does matter as a form of queer inquiry and social intervention to the extent that it remains dedicated to deeper understandings of cultural literacy, resistance to discursive and intellectual colonization in a (hetero)normative academy and social order, credible social change, and more democratic spheres of classroom and public deliberation" (15).
Building on this belief, we examine the issue of feminist collaboration from a queer theoretical perspective. Focusing particularly on our collaboration as authors of Finding Out: LGBT history, politics, and culture (to be published by SAGE Press in 2008), we describe our collaborative process and theorize about the dynamics of that process. We also relate the issues of collaboration and the producing of textbooks to a discussion of queer pedagogy, including their perceived positioning in the academic hierarchy.
The 2008 conference also hosted the second NWSA Tribute Panel, "Tribute to Black Feminist Thought," which was " intended to honor past scholarship that has set new directions for the field. 2008 will feature a tribute to tribute to [sic] black feminist thought, emerging both from within and beyond the belly of US American empire, most particularly embodied within the work of Audre Lorde." The panel speakers included Kaila Adia Story, Melinda L. de Jesús, and Emi Koyama.
A slate of special events was also organized this year. They included a musical performance by Amy Carol Webb and Shelley Graff. The performance, titled "Songvoices: Resisting Hegemonies," included "songs about women who consciously chose to change the world through resistance" and was intended " to affirm the many amazing local, regional, national, and international women who not only resisted hegemonies through their choices, but whose courageous, pioneering spirits envisioned a new paradigm for women's power." Kathy Y. Wilson performed a "mash-up of rants, nightmares, open letters and quasi-word associations" under the name "Your Negro Tour Guide" that confronted normative depictions of Black people and Blackness in the U.S. And for the first time, the the Women's Spirituality Interest Group organized a Full Moon Celebration and Midsummer Ritual.